With the rising popularity of cloud computing, virtual desktop environments, such as those based on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Desktop-as-a-Service (DAAS) have become rapidly growing industries. In a conventional VDI or DAAS environment, a user is provisioned a virtual desktop and is allowed to access their virtual desktop over a remote network connection, such as a WAN connection. The virtual desktops are typically hosted on servers that reside in a data center of the enterprise (or a third party service provider), and each host server may execute multiple virtual desktops. Users can utilize a client device to remotely log into their individual virtual desktop and all of the application execution takes place on the remote host server which is linked to the local client device over a network, using a remote display protocol such as remote desktop protocol (RDP), PC-over-IP protocol, virtual network computing (VNC) protocol, or the like. Using such a remote desktop protocol, the user can interact with applications of the virtual desktop, which are running on the remote host server, such that only the display, keyboard, and mouse information is communicated with the local client device. A common implementation of this approach is to host multiple desktop operating system instances on a server hardware platform running a hypervisor.
In many ways, VDI and DAAS provide a more centralized and efficient computing environment because each user is able to access their individual desktop from any device capable of making a network connection and from virtually any location. All of the user data is stored in the cloud (e.g., in a data center), providing more centralized management and quality of control for the organization that may employ the individual users.
However, a number of inconveniences and other issues remain in the context of virtual desktop environments. One form of inconvenience stems from the fact that users frequently utilize a variety of devices to remotely access their individual virtual desktop. For example, throughout the day a single user may log into their virtual desktop using a personal computer (PC), a laptop, a tablet computer and a mobile phone. Conventionally, the user would need to enter a username and password each time that he or she wishes to log into their virtual desktop. Moreover, when changing devices, the user would typically log out of the virtual desktop of one device only to log into the desktop using a different devices, sometimes losing any state information (e.g., open applications, etc.) and potentially data that was not saved before logging out.